get set for the thanksgiving. how the summer drought may affect the cost of your holiday meal. in today's cover story, traffic check. will roads or airports be more crowded this turkey day? more americans are skipping out on vacation time. how it's dragging down the economy. and, a case of fraud spells trouble for h-p. plus, traders are placing bets on the fiscal cliff. find out how the odds are stacking up. first business starts now.

you're watching first business: financial news, analysis, and today's investment ideas. good morning. it's wednesday, november 21st. i'm angela miles. in today's first look: turkey tracks - trading volume is expected to be lighter than normal toward the end of the session as traders head home for the holiday. yesterday trading was a mixed bag of small gains and losses with the exception of oil, which fell $2. fed chair ben bernanke is urging lawmakers to strike a deal on the fiscal cliff sooner rather than later, otherwise the nation will return to recession. the obama administartion formally proposed new rules on healthcare, including requiring coverage for pre-existing conditions and minimum health benefits for millions. and in earnings after hours, salesforce.com rallied on better-than-expected news, while the zale fell 10% as the company lost some shine on earnings. larry shover of sfg alternatives joins us now. those reports larry of cease-fire

coming out of israel really rocked the oil market yesterday. what do you anticipate for today? > > i anticipate the trend to continue. keep in mind, before we had this cease-fire, a month ago, there was a big downward trend in the oil price. so i just expect that momentum to continue. refinery margins are really high, there is a lot of supply. i expect oil to continue to lower in price. > > what about greece? will we be able to get any closure there with the bailout money? > > i think the only way we are going to get closure is when people are willing to forgive and write down their debt, because that is the only way it's going to work. right now they are 180% debt-to-gdp. they need to get it down to 120%. it's just not going to happen. they don't have the money to be able to do this. they are going to have to forgive debt and take a haircut.

> > month after month, traders are watching better-than- expected news come in from the housing sector. can we call the housing crisis done? > > i think we can. i think we have fallen down a seven-year flight of steps in terms of housing. i don't think we're going to see pre-2007 levels anytime soon, but i think we have bottomed out, and i think we are underestimating the tailwind that can provide to building mortgages, banks, etc. it is a great thing for our economy right now. > > final question: what do you anticipate for the holiday trade? > > i think the holiday trade right now is to be long base metals. i think gold is going to make a year-end run. if you can get involved in copper or aluminum, that as well. but i do believe gold is going to be the one that is going to shine by the end of the year. > > have a good holiday larry. thank you. give thanks for last minute deals. traveling on thanksgiving day may be the cheapest day to fly. but far more americans will be driving before and after the holiday, a slight uptick from the year before. aaa says 43.6 million americans will drive at least 50 miles from home this thanksgiving - slightly more than the number last year - but the number of travelers flying is expected to dip slightly, despite deals like coupons and cheaper fares on thanksgiving day. "there's big schedules at the airlines now on thanksgiving, trying to make the most of the holiday, and you can still find some deals." fewer air travelers shortens the average trip americans will make: this year, 588 miles, down from 706 miles last year. those who don't fly often may

find transportation security administration - tsa - rules this year a little different. "kids 12 and younger don't have to take shoes off. it helps everyone go through airport security. also, there are body scanners now, and even if you have a tissue in your pocket, you should remove the tissue ahead of time." overall, holiday travel, whether driving, flying or taking a bus or train, is down 26% from the peak in 2005. while it may not seem like a deal, the price of gasoline has dropped 35 cents in the last month. and there are other values to be found on the road between home and grandma's house. "people are continuing to look for inexpensive hotels, free breakfasts, free wifi." the best deals may be by bus. "a lot of people book last minute fares and that works well on trains and busses. not so much for airlines. even

though bus fares may rise somewhat, you can still find some deals." overall, travel is slowly coming back, but it still hasn't fully recovered from thanksgiving 2008, when travel fell by 25%. if you are braving the black friday frenzy this year, there are several items that are not worth stalking on the big day. according to various reports, don't expect deals on toys. retailers wait until closer to christmas before discounting those. deals can often be found on electronic gadgets, but not necessarily on tablets, which are hot this year. take a pass too on jewelry - prices tend to be highest at this time of year. and, wait until january to stock up on winter clothes. that's when you'll find the real deals. will a last-ditch, court urged mediation between management and labor unions save the

iconic twinkie? after the first day of renewed negotiations between hostess and its unions, voices on both sides say that it may be possible, but it won't be easy to get managment and hostess workers on the same page. several buyers are reportedly interested in buying the beleaguered baker. while americans may be sweating out whether the u.s. is heading for a fall off the so-called fiscal cliff, traders are pricing in the odds of whether it will happen. alan knuckman of option-shop joins us this morning from cme group. good morning alan. > > good morning angie. > > weeks before the election, although we questioned it, traders were confidentely telling us the president would be re-elected. it happened. so how do the odds look for a recession in 2013? > > the markets tell us a lot. when we were looking at the election, we were looking at a prediction market that had a lot of volume. volume is the key to price discovery because of all the buyers and sellers. when

we are looking at the fiscal cliff numbers, they are not as clear, because there is not as many traders to get that information from. > > ben bernanke was in new york yesterday, and he is urging lawmakers to strike a deal on the fiscal cliff sooner rather than later. should we be concerned? because it sounds like the fed is worried. > > we are always concerned. if you look at it, the long-term bears have been beaten up by the markets for the last four years. so, the market has been resilient and bounced back from everything. if we look at some of these predictions markets, there is about a 50/50 chance it will be above 13,000 in the dow, and there is a very low chance, only a 20% chance, albeit on small volume, that the gdp will put us into recession with two consecutive quarters of negative growth. > > i am not going to try to doubt you any more. good to have you on the show, that's alan knuckman- > > it's the market! > > you got it. thank you alan. have a good thanksgiving. americans contributed more in 2012 to help chip away at the nation's debt. nearly $8 million were donated towards

the nation's debt this year. that's according to the bureau of public debt. this is a large jump for the bureau that has on average recieved $3 million a year in donations since 2009. however, on the larger scale of things, it is $8 million down, a whopping $16 trillion to go. the overall debt currently hovers near $16 trillion. the number of americans heading back to work is slowly rising as unemployment numbers fall. unemployment rates fell last month in 37 states. south carolina, alaska and wisconsin were the states with the sharpest declines in unemployment, while the number of people not working ticked up slightly in arkansas, connecticut, massachusetts, north dakota, oklahoma, south dakota and vermont. nevada has the highest unemployment rate at 11.5%. and thanks to the oil boom, north dakota still has the lowest rate, even though the rate edged up from 3.0% to 3.1%. a particularly rough quarter for hewlett-packard. an accounting scandal is rocking the company and the stock. the tech giant is taking a $9 billion write-

down due to bad accouting by autonomy software the british company hp aqcuired last year. autonomy's founder denies the charges. hpq stock fell 12% yesterday. h-p ceo meg whitman said an internal investigation revealed "serious accounting improprieties" and "outright misrepresentations" by autonomy. this makes 5 straight quarters of large declines for the tech company. what's being called the most lucrative case of insider trading ever has been uncovered by federal authorities. the sec is bringing charges against mathew martoma for making more than $276 million. the case dates back to july 2008, when martoma allegedly learned about the results of a clinical trial of an alzheimer's drug a week before the data were released to the public. martoma made a massive profit by selling stock he owned in the elan and wyeth drug companies, as well as shorting those stocks. the sec says martoma reaped big gains when the stocks fell.

groupon shares jumped yesterday after a hedge fund revealed its stake in the company. tiger global, a new york hedge fund, said this week it has a 9.9% stake in groupon. groupon shares rose as much as 13%, before ending the day at $3.38. the stock hit its all time low of $2.60 last week following disappointing earnings. green mountain is hoping for a pop in coffee sales with its latest hire. brian kelley will become the next president and ceo of green mountain coffee roasters. he most recenly served as an executive at coca- cola. he starts december 3rd. shares of green mountain perked up this week, trading 11% higher monday and 6% more on tuesday. money cant buy happiness. but, as it turns out, happiness could earn you more money. a recent study finds having greater satisfaction earlier in life can correlate to higher

incomes later on. 10,000 americans were studied over a period of several years, starting at age 16. unhappy teens earned 30% less than the average salary, while happy teens earned 10% above average. happier people on average earned 2 to 8 thousand dollars more than the average salary. coming up, how much is last summer's drought affecting this week's thanksgiving dinner? correspondent paul eggers investigates. but first, where you need to do your holiday shopping if you want to save money on the feast, right after this.

your turkey day total could be less, depending on where you shop. bloomberg reports the total cost of a thanksgiving dinner at target is cheaper than at walmart. that's if you buy all the thanksgiving fixings, including turkey, potatoes, cranberries and pumpkin. the bill at target rang up to $45. at walmart, the damage was $52. meanwhile, over at whole foods, the cost is significantly higher, at $70. as americans count the cost of thier holiday dinner, paul eggers reports, the summer drought caused profits at some turkey farms to fly away.

it doesn't take long for these little hatchlings to become whopping pounds of poultry that can feed most any family. 'average age is about 16 weeks. average lifespan for these guys behind me is about 2 hours.' the dressing line for his once well-fed fowl- 'we figure our average weight is about 17 pounds' -is where robert kaufmann finally produces an asset from his biggest liability. 'my turkeys have grown fabulously well. i'm glad, because i'm feeding them the most expensive corn i've ever seen.' after a summer drought that cut his own corn crop by 1/3, kaufmann had to hike up his prices by 20 cents a pound. nationally, prices moved up just 4 cents to $1.39 a pound. 'i see turkeys being sold for half of what they bought them for.' supermarket specials on turkey act as a loss leader, bringing in customers for headline prices. they then hope to make that money back - and more - on higher-margin items. "walmart, target, costco in

particular, all use food as a loss-leader - all food, not just turkey. so that's why if you look at the financial health of a lot of these supermarket operators, it's poor to declining. and the reason why is their bread and butter is selling food, and you have these other concepts that sell food as a loss-leader, so its very difficult for supermarkets to compete on price." kaufman sells about 1,000-2,000 birds out of the store on his farm, a tiny fraction of the nearly 40,000 fresh birds he'll ship out around chicagoland this season. 'yeah, it looks pretty full.' staff on the farm increases ten-fold around thanksgiving, from 7 full-timers to nearly 70 on the dressing line. still, no one is working as hard as kaufmann. 'i'm working 16 hours a day.' thanksgiving does bring a bit of a break on the ho-ka turkey farms, but the dressing line will be right back up and running next week on wednesday to process another 10,000

turkeys for christmas. reporting here in waterman, illinois, i'm paul eggers, first business news. meanwhile, by christmas, beef prices could spike by $1 to $3 a pound for prime cuts of tenderloin, according to dan basse of ag-resources. coming up, how working instead of vacationing might actually hurt the economy. that's next.

america, you deserve a break. studies show americans get an a + at working hard, but are failing at taking vacations. sara gavin, director of public relations for expedia joins us this morning. good morning. why are people not using their vacation time? > > thanks so much for having me angela. you are exactly right. america is starved for vacation. we do this survey every year - we surveyed 22 different countries - and there are some things we wouldn't be surprised at. europeans get much more vacation than americans do. but for the first time, this year, we have an alarming trend: we are actually at the bottom of that barrel. for the first time we actually fell behind japan in terms of number of vacation days. so, last year we got 14 and took about 13. this year we only got 12 and we're

only taking 10 days, leaving 2 on the table even though we get fewer days overall. > > is this good or bad for the economy? > > it is actually awful for the economy in two ways. on the one hand, hospitality and tourism really drives the economy in a lot of cities. you think about how are new york and atlantic city, how are they going to sort of recover post- hurricane sandy? that's really about tourism dollars there. so that makes a huge difference all across the economy, is sort of fueling those tourism dollars. the other piece of it is, we are just better workers and we get better work done when we are well-rested and take vacations. study after study shows while we may worry that taking vacation time makes us look bad at work, we are actually more creative and more productive when we take vacation. and it's better for our employers, too. so,

people who take their vacation time are more likely to stay at their jobs because they are just happier there. > > what are some other reasons why we skip vacations? i have a feeling some of that has to do with we don't want to let our co-workers down. if you are gone, that means somebody has to cover for you. > > there is a lot of guilt associated with vacation, that is for sure. and that's one of the reasons why americans, even when we sort of look like we're taking vacation or we say we're taking vacation, we don't unplug. every year we study this, and this year that stat of how connected we are really skyrocketed. 34% of americans reported that they're checking in while they're on vacation. they're on their smartphone, they are still doing e-mail and trying to sort of cover and not look bad at work, or they're even taking conference calls. which really isn't a vacation at all. > > i will book something today. good to have you on the show this morning. that's sara gavin of expedia.com. just ahead, heweltt-packard stock is at all-time low levels since 2002. are there still hpq bulls in the market? find out next.

we have a slew of trouble stocks to talk about in chart talk with andrew keene, president of

keeneonthemarket.com. good morning andrew. > > good morning angie. > > let's start with hewlett- packard. this stock dropped heavily yesterday. is it a buy today? > > today? no. possibly ever? no. i continue to look a lot of these stocks. i look at groupon, i look at facebook, i continue to think these are going to move much, much lower. had earnings, earnings weren't good. they have the whole autonomy scandal going on. this company seems like it can do nothing right. they're not in the tablet space. just like dell, this stock is headed lower. > > are a lot of people bearish on this stock, or are there any bulls out there? > > actually i put on an option trade that was not too much of a bearish trade, and the stock sold off too much. the option market was implying the stock to move about 7% on earnings. it moved 11%. $11.35, you can use that as a base from yesterday's low. if you want to get long it you have a stop under that. this is the 10-year low in hpq. any kind of rumor of the company actually splitting into hardware and software could get a pop in the stock, but i think every pop should be sold.

> > research in motion. a buy or sell? > > unbelievable. i was looking at these three charts, and i looked at it and i was like, wow, rim sets up to look like the best for a chart. i can't believe those words are coming out of my mouth. > > wow. > > i have been saying many times, i think rim is going to 0, but the fact of the matter is, these stocks are all about price action, price momentum. and in rim's case, it's going higher. i think once it breaks through this $10 level, it has more upside. a lot of activity in the option market, a lot of upside call buyers thinking that possibly it can get bought for patent value. it has some name value. bb 10 is coming out as well. i want to be long rim, but i want to buy it on a pullback. i am looking at the $9.20 level to be a buyer on rim, with a stop under $7.50. but rim looks pretty good on the charts. > > and apple. is the big selling over? > > i do not think so. i actually was short it from $625. i did cover it yesterday. i did not cover it at $505, $525, or even $545. i covered at $560. but then yesterday it gapped a little bit higher up to $572. i think apple is headed lower. i don't think this is a one-day event. if you look at stuff like chesapeake with aubrey mcclendon, if you look at stuff like the b.p. oil spill, nothing really changing in the story on apple, right? they're still having increased competition, they're still cannibalizing their own products. i still think the stock is headed lower. on a day- to-day basis, making lower lows, lower highs. yes, it had a nice, huge rally - in two days it was up $40. that is great. i still think it heads down to the south

of $500 before it gets to $650. > > thank you. have a good thanksgiving. > > you too. that's it for today. coming up on thanksgiving, our film critic will be here with a preview of films playing on the silver screen this holiday season. from all of us at first business, we wish you a safe and happy thanksgiving. man falls into a water filled rock quarry in oakland and drowns. what he was doing just before the accident. we'll tell you how the rainy, wet weather could effect your holiday travel plans. out of here in time if you are traveling or heading off to grand mall's house today.

it's time now for the ktvu morning news. and good morning. welcome to morning news it's wednesday, november 21st i'm pam cook. let's talk about that rainy weather, steve. >> thank you claudine. we do have rain moving through. this system took awhile to get here. once it did it worked its way in. there is even upstream system kind of giving us a little bit of a shower activity. the main front is slashing by right there. there has been good totals. we'll talk about that in five minutes. steve, good morning. the rain obviously will not be great for driving anywhere. you will have to slow down a little bit. so far it's light and we are expecting a commute today that will not be as busy. but right now in oakland you can see rain here. also if you are driving to the bay bridge toll plaza it is going to be okay. heavy rain right no